Three more links from the past – two of them never before reprinted! (possibly with good reason) If you want just the content and none of my reminiscing, go here.
March 1999: That’s What I Call Sweet Music – this is the best of the original batch of articles I put up on Freaky Trigger: a review of Robert Crumb’s compilation of 20s dance orchestra pop (which is still an excellent album). Some themes here that crop up again in my Popular project – an interest in the history of pop in the context of what was popular (rather than a focus on what turned out to be ‘important’) and a concern with the use-value of older pop.
April 1999: Velvet Goldmine – this review reads quite oddly to me, since I can’t remember the film at all, and since I’m trying to sound breezily informed on things I actually had very little idea about (like, well, films). To be honest, it reads like I’m trying to impress blogs that hadn’t even been started at this point. Beyond the awkwardness, some good points – at this time I was keen on the ritualistic aspects of music consumption: buying and playing records – so no wonder I responded to key scenes in Velvet Goldmine so strongly. MP3 culture got rid of all that!
May 1999: The Singles Bar: I was very keen from the start that FT should have a singles review component, of which this is a selection. I’m a little astonished that I bought all these singles – though of course how else would I have heard them back then? Like most of the early FT content this was all written for an imaginary music press (and, at this point, a largely imaginary audience). Note my naive belief that the early 80s were somehow unrevivable!
I was trying to see if there was a Pumpkin review of Velvet Goldmine, which I remember hating but there’s no archive on Waybackmachine so I guess not.
But we will be getting to Pumpkin’s in a few years time anyway!
BTW Pete if you want to do a retroactive “Great News For All Our Readers” style incorporation of old pumpkin reviews into the FT archives, be my guest!
I will talk to main site admin about this some time soon.
In the ‘publish’ panel when you are writing a post there’s a little calendar icon ‘publish immediately [edit]’ — click the edit link to change the date of the post to any time in the past.
It feels like what happened with the Crumb comp piece was that your confidence in your argument drove the writing, meaning you didn’t resort to some of the minor tics that crop up in the other two entries. But the VG one isn’t bad, either…
I’m trying to sound breezily informed on things I actually had very little idea about
It doesn’t read that way to me, or, if in fact you actually know nothing about Wilde and Bloomsbury and Bowie, you pull off the masquerade. Maybe the word “always” is a bit bogus in “the temptation is always to play up the Fin De Siecle aspects at the expense of Feeling the Noize,” given that you use a sentence structure that lets you evade saying who or what is always tempted. But other than that, you’re solid on your feet, and the ending is heartfelt and not remotely in critic speak.
What an excellently written and lovely review of Velvet Goldmine. I love that you bring in Kurt Cobain at the end. Thank you!